Garage Building in the UP of Michigan, Part 5

Happy New Year!

We ended up staying in the UP for an extra day to finish building the garage. The only Things we had left to finish were the gable ends and laying the felt paper on the other side of the gable roof.

The studs for framing the gable ends had already been cut by Tim the day before off of numbers I had given to him. By measuring the stud under the ridge I can determine the length of all the gable studs on 16 inch centers. By knowing the pitch of the roof (7/12), multiply the rise per foot times four. In this case that's 28 inches. Thats how much the roof pitch falls in 4 feet. There are 3 studs in four feet so we divide 28 inches by 3. This is 9 and 1/3 of an inch. When the studs are cut, each one will be 9 and 1/3 inches shorter than the proceeding one. If the first stud is 70 inches, the next one will be 60 and 2/3 inches, followed by 51 1/3", 42" and so on.

Tony and I nailed in all the gable studs. While we did that, Tim and Jim cut the plywood for the gable ends. I gave Tim the numbers for these cuts also. We already know the roof falls 28" every four feet. If the height under the ridge is 70", the short side cut on the plywood will be 42 inches. the next piece will be 42 inches on the long side and 14 inches on the short side. To get the last piece measure whats left on what would be the bottom of the plywood. In this case it would be 24 inches. The last piece would be 14 inches on the long side to 0 inches on the short side and 24 inches long across the bottom.

Once Tony and I finished the framing on the gable ends, we started putting the plywood (OSB) on the gables. This went fairly quickly since it was already precut for us. This left only the felt paper to be put on.

We saved the felt paper for last because we wanted to make sure there was no frost on the roof. We also put the felt in the house to keep it warm so it would lay flatter. The felt we put on the day before did not want to lay flat and would tear easily if we weren't careful. We were hoping for a snowfall soon after we finished. Any high winds would rip the paper and reduce the protection from the weather. Snow would cover the paper and protect it from the wind.

We covered the garage door and service door openings with plastic to keep any snow out of garage for our final detail before packing up and heading back home.

All things considered the project went well. Weather was a factor but not as much as it could have been. It was cold but there was no wind and it did not snow. As long as you kept active it didn't seem as cold as the thermometer indicated.

The nail guns did not work as well in the cold weather by either jamming more frequently or the plunger not recovering fast enough to bounce nail the plywood. Oiling the guns helped reduce these problems.

Would I do it again? If I could be guaranteed the same weather conditions, yes. Snow and wind would have made the project difficult to do and would have taken longer to complete.

Mike Merisko

www.sawkerfs.com